


Trenches

by saboten



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 14:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saboten/pseuds/saboten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look what the cat dragged in”, Pyp says though his voice betrays him. He makes his way past brothers and crushes Grenn in a hug. With all additional layers of cloth and armour Grenn is as broad as a barrel and Pyp hardly clasps his hands behind his back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trenches

1

He returns on the last waves of the blast, _one for rangers_ , coated in a white crust of ice and exhaustion. They are the last ones to come back, a fraction of the great range and the sad remaining force of the Wall.

Pyp doesn’t pay attention to the voices around him, a small group of brothers left earlier that day. Only when he hears the words he leaves everything and dashes to the yard. It’s easy enough to spot him, even surrounded by brothers Grenn stands out. Big and tall, tough Pyp would find him. Always. Their eyes finally meet and Grenn fights his fatigue to grin. His teeth flash from under a moustache he didn’t have back then, and his long, shaggy hair and beard make him resemble an aurochs even more.

“Look what the cat dragged in”, Pyp says though his voice betrays him. He makes his way past brothers and crushes Grenn in a hug. With all additional layers of cloth and armour Grenn is as broad as a barrel and Pyp hardly clasps his hands behind his back. But that doesn’t matter. He is back. Grenn is alive and back and warm, and the solid body of his allows Pyp to breathe again.

“There are no cats at the wall”, Grenn says and Pyp’s world is whole again. Grenn, thick as a castle wall. A beard tickles his skin, sharp and smooth and he wants to run his hands though it, to feel it sting when kissed (he pretends he doesn’t know where that thought comes from). He let’s go and could tell the stupid grin on his face and the way he looks at Grenn, but only one thing matters: Grenn’s back.

“If there were, you’d have eaten them.”

“I wouldn’t”, Grenn insists. “I like cats. And dogs.”

“They taste better anyway”, Pyp jests and ducks to avoid Grenn’s big hand. “What took you so long to find the way back? Did you find yourself a lady bear to break your vows with?”

 

2

“We lost them. We lost Sam, we lost Jon. Old Mormont. Craster’s Keep”, he says when they are alone in the space of Grenn’s cell. “Lost.”

“You’re back.”

Grenn looks up. “Not them.”

 

3

They hardly sleep at all. The wildlings at their door step, sawing and hammering day and night, give them no rest. And with the wildlings at their door step, the brothers move to the cells close to the yard. Neither Donal Noye nor Jon need to make them, the Watch mostly old men and cripples, and they want to get to what might be their last battle in time. Most of the rooms are free now, anyway.

“You’re trying to out-do the fucking wildlings?” Pyp thwacks Grenn hard, at least he tries.

Grenn doesn’t bother to roll around. “Piss off.”

He’s back at snoring and Pyp sighs. Every night he closes his eyes with regret over the prospect of death with fucking him in his dreams only. Pyp never was with a woman, not even in Mole Town, and he never was with a man either. Too young, too small, too poor - it didn’t help him to raise skirts, not even his singing. He knows about it, at least he knows _some things_ about it, recalling noises and voices in the dark when he wandered between the tents of his mummer’s trope and the tales spun by older boys.

He knows how the brothers look at Satin. Not all of them, but enough for Pyp. The names. But it’s easy for him to get under Grenn’s skin, too easy, and it becomes the same wine was to his father. His old man has known what it did to him and stayed away the best he could until he couldn’t, like always, and they found him in a ditch. Pyp vowed to himself to never follow that path but he hasn’t dreamt about Grenn yet.

He tries to wake up facing the walls in the mornings.

 

4

They win, barely, and they lose, and there are a king and a queen at the Wall now. They have to make room for Stannis and his following, so they move to Pyp’s old cell.

“Want to share again?”, Grenn asks and already puts his few belongings down.

They shared a bed long before. It’s easier to fall into _a_ bed than first to walk out into the cold to find your own bed and then fall into it after drinking, and it’s warmer that way besides. At the Wall, you never get fully warm again, the cold already deep inside your bones, but it’s the closest you get. There’s nothing to it, really, as others share beds and cells as well.

Pyp tries to hide the shaking hands and the smile at the corners of his lips. “You snore like the beast you are, find your own room”, he says and doesn’t miss the jerk in Grenn’s movements. _Lost, he looks so lost._ “Just joking, of course we’re bunking. Wouldn’t even dream of having Toad in my bed. Or Sam. We would need two beds. But it’d get really warm on the other hand...” He chatters on and moves around and the walls are too close all of a sudden. He pretends he doesn’t see the relief.

Grenn hardly speaks of it.

 

5

“I missed you”, Grenn says once.

He needs a moment and then another because Grenn talks the Great Range, and then one more, but his response comes off one beat only. “I missed your stupid face, t--- Ow!”, Pyp laughs and holds his ribs and he’s thankful for the shortage of candles at the Wall for once.

 

6

It could be so easy. Pyp’s mind is full of unspoken words and passed opportunities.

It doesn’t help that they are almost always on their own. Sam gone to become a maester, Jon too high up to join them but never too high to beat them in the train yard. King’s men and wildlings present at every turn and always close to butt heads over nothings.

The ache of longing grows, invading limbs, hands, fingertips and he’s always close to losing some during kitchen work. He forgets how it feels to be still. Chopping turnips was a curse and a blessing, allowing him to think too much or nothing at all. Not that anyone would mind the extra meat, but Pyp only has so many fingers to give. Strangely enough, he gets better on the bow, hitting close to the target more often than missing it.

It’s not Grenn’s fault but Pyp would gladly blame him to pay up for the turmoil he wrecked.

He gets frustrated with Grenn easier every day, his words more vicious and vengeful and he hates himself for it. It’s not his fault, but Pyp wants to go further, not only under his skin but under his flesh and burn himself into Grenn’s stupid mind. Desire to hurt grows within him and it makes him fear himself. He is careful, at least he thinks himself to be. This is not a risk he’s willing to make because he can’t picture himself growing old without Grenn; he couldn’t picture himself growing old at all, not in this place.

It _should_ be so easy.

 

7

(You never see the way they look at you when you’re not looking, and there is tragedy in that.)

 

8

Grenn takes off his boots and then plumps down on the bed, their bed, and nearly crushes Pyp. He wraps an arm around his waist and turns to sleep.

„Seven hells, you reek. When did you visit the bathhouse for the last time?“

“None of your concern.”

Pyp grazes him with the wineskin, leftovers he managed to sneak out of the kitchens. “I sleep in the same bed, of course it concerns me.”

“Piss off.”

He takes a sip and ponders out loud, “Mayhaps I should ask the king to take care of you.”

“...Why would he care?”

“It’s his royal duty to care for his people’s well-being. And”, he stresses, “I am one of the people he should be caring for.” Pyp tries his best royal voice and proclaims, “I, Stannis Baratheon, first of his name, King of the turnips and King of Westeros and so forth and whatnot, command you to take a bath for the sake of this country’s peace and Pypar’s nose.”

“Would be a waste, I’m in the stables on the morrow”, Grenn mumbles into the cushion and his beard tickles at Pyp’s ear.

 

9

He knows the things that are to know about Grenn, and it’s not much compared to his own past. Pyp travelled the Seven Kingdoms with his troupe (well, almost, and even that is a stretch by far, but you don’t go around saying that). Grenn is simple, but not thick. There is no poetry in his cause for joining the Watch, neither is in Pyp’s. He knows some more, things that you are confided in when it’s dark and cold and you can’t sleep yet.

Some things are left unspoken even in the comfort of darkness; lingering at his tongue’s tip but he recites all the reasons against it like a prayer.

He wonders if he sees him the same way and it’s hard to breathe all over again.

 

10

Grenn trashes in his sleep. No one expected Grenn to take damage from the events behind the Wall. Grenn the aurochs. Grenn, thick as a castle wall. He returned with few cold sores and fewer scratches and he was big and slow and steady as the Wall itself in the storms around them. Pyp jokes, Grenn reacts. But his words and blows sometimes are slower, Pyp notices, crushed under memories of white and red even after all this time. Grenn hardly speaks of it.

He aches to kiss Grenn, on the brow in the fashion his mother used to when he cried over scraped knees or shadows in the dark. _You are too dumb to be afraid_. He bites his tongue, although that’s how they work. But not here. Instead he searches for Grenn’s broad hand under the furs. Silence weighs them down and fills the corners of their cell. He tastes his heart thumping right up in his throat but he never lets go, and he knows it’s all right. His breathing slows down. All right. It’s all right. “It’s all right”, he says out loud and isn’t sure whom the words comfort more.

 

11

He asks him to help trim his hair, but _don’t you touch my beard_ , and Pyp is past shaky hands. He gathers a pair of scissors and they settle on the wooden stairs. He does the deed with a steady grip, though the cold bites his fingers. Grenn’s hair piles up at their feet and the wind is merciful that day.

“It’s getting cold”, Grenn says and runs a hand over the vacantness.

(A man of the king mutters about Wun Wun losing his only friend under his breath, but he’s wise enough to pass quickly even when Grenn ceased to care about their japes and lets it go unnoticed.)

Pyp shoos it away. “Not finished yet. Turn.” He works on the front and Grenn is all he sees. He fills his vision, eyes trained on Pyp and his breath tickles on his skin. He wonders about the beard out of a sudden and Pyp feels his face getting warm and prays he can talk his way out with the cold. Grenn only flicks his eyes to the side, for a second.

“There you go.” He brushes last remnants away off his scalp and short hair prickles under his palms. “Look at you now. I can hear the lady bears bemoaning their loss already”, he jests.

Grenn scowls and catches his wrist. “I don’t want no bear”, he says.

Pyp almost drops the scissors, taken aback by the force behind the words (it’s different, he swears, it’s different from their usual banter) and the hurt in Grenn’s eyes. It hits him like Jon’s backhand on the sword and he wants to laugh so he doesn’t have to cry and his head spins on the realization that Grenn is not the only dense around.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not beta-read, so I'm happy if you take the time to point out mistakes. Thank you.


End file.
